The New York Mets (20-11) defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers (16-16) by a score of 4-2 at Dodger Stadium Monday night.
Pitching:
Steven Matz continued his early season success with another nice effort tonight. Matz pitched six innings, allowing two runs, striking out five, and walking one. Matz is now 5-1 on the year with a 2.86 ERA, 2.67 FIP.
Matz was cruising in the game early before getting into trouble in the bottom of the fourth. Justin Turner hit a fly ball to right field and the ball went off Curtis Granderson’s glove in foul territory to put a runner on base. With one on and two out, Trayce Thompson made him pay by blasting his third home run of the year over the right field wall.
Hansel Robles came on in the seventh and pitched a clean inning facing Chase Utley for the first time since last year’s postseason fireworks. There was no drama tonight as Utley weakly grounded out to Lucas Duda.
Antonio Bastardo and Jim Henderson combined to give the Mets a scoreless eighth inning. Bastardo had gotten himself into a bit of a jam after Juan Lagares uncharacteristically dropped an easy fly ball. Luckily, it was Henderson’s turn to clean up the mess as he recorded two straight outs to end the inning.
Jeurys Familia came on to pitch a 1, 2, 3 ninth for his eleventh save of the year.
Offense:
The Mets offense got things started right away with a leadoff home run from Curtis Granderson on the first pitch of the game to give the Mets the early 1-0 lead.
The suddenly hot Kevin Plawecki hit a home run of his own in the top of the second to make the score 2-0.
The Mets tacked on to their lead further in the top of third but really missed a golden opportunity to bust the game wide open. Curtis Granderson lead off the inning with a single but got thrown out at second base trying to be a bit too aggressive.
After Asdrubal Cabrera and David Wright walked, Yoenis Cespedes singled in a run to left fielder Enrique Hernandez to make it 3-0 still with only one out.
After another walk to Lucas Duda to load the bases, Juan Lagares hit a flare to Hernandez and Cespedes got caught leading off too far from second base for a double play to end what appeared to be a huge potential inning. Scott Kazmir was clearly on the ropes.
Steven Matz gave himself a little more breathing room though in the top of the sixth inning by lacing a RBI double down the left field line to give the Mets a 4-2 lead. Can anybody get our pitchers out?
Notes:
Neil Walker remained out of the lineup tonight due to a bruised shin.
Michael Conforto was kept out the lineup against the lefty tonight.
The Mets bullpen has been incredible as they lowered their National League leading ERA.
On Deck:
The Mets will play their second game of a four game series with the Los Angeles Dodgers tomorrow night at Dodgers stadium. The game has a start time of 10:10 PM. Jacob deGrom (3-1, 1.99 ERA) will be looking for his first regular season win ever at Dodger Stadium. He will face lefty Alex Wood (1-3 5.18 ERA). This will be deGrom’s first meeting with the Dodgers since last year’s gutty game 5 performance in the NLDS.
